Tag Archives: education

My frustration over finding appropriate writings to help me with my Media Research Methods mid-term paper mounts with on-line databases asking for 40 dollars to gain a peek at an article. I have had some success with Google Scholar and a little success with RULA on Ryerson’s on-line site. I have a pile of articles in a folder to go through and a list of books to search for in the library.

While trying to place a hold on a book from on-line an hour and a half away from Toronto, I discovered that the system would not let me in. I emailed for some help and got a very quick response. My card won’t work until I go into the library and physically have it activated. I’m hoping there won’t be any additional time added on in waiting for activation of my card. It’s been over a month and I’m still waiting for my OneCard to help me unlock the TV production doors on the main floor of Ryerson so that I can used the Grad lounge.

Contemplating the third thesis question, I am wondering what issues to cover and how narrow a focus I should have. The thesis question is: Many Media theorists are discussing changes in the way television is being delivered and received. Is television still part of the texture of everyday life?

I like this question and would far prefer to go off giving my own opinions about it. It would likely end up taking a technological determinist tone as I observe what’s going on around me and know that I am not immune to the changes in my own use of television (see earlier post). Most television for me has become background noise. There are just a handful of shows that I will even watch anymore. I feel ripped off by the media content producers who use ordinary people who are wanna-be TV stars as cheap talent for their shows. Edgy humour and movie-like storylines and high technical quality appeal to me now. (HBO lives!)

I have also become a multi-tasker. I will have the TV on while working on the computer and even listening to music at the same time. My attention will float back and forth between what I find interesting in the moment. TV is everyday background noise that has a lot to compete with in capturing my attention.

Since my essay is to be a scholarly article with 4 scholarly sources cited and 2 library databases, I know I’ll have to quote someone else’s opinions on the subject. I could look at media convergence in technology, vertical integration in media business models, and even branding while examining the change in delivery and reception of television. I could look up quantitative number crunching results on the number of people watching TV, how many TVs are in the average home, and how much time are people of various age groups spending in front of the tube a week. This may give me some statistical analysis of trends in television usage to help support my thesis. Now my question becomes, how focused on an area do I need to be? Will there be enough room in a 1500 word essay to explore subtopics in my thesis?

The initial panic is wearing off from being back at school. I think I’ve come to terms with the the fact that I won’t see my family again until August.

There is a lot of reading, which I initially tried to read off the computer screen. I have since printed off the articles, highlighted passages and written notes in the margin. I do have the technology to write sticky notes in the columns of PDFs and highlight text but I don’t seem to retain the information in the same way. There’s something about feeling the paper in hand and putting the geographical positioning of the passages into photographic memory that makes me connect better with the text than a screen scroll on a computer. This brings to question whether it’s a digital native versus digital immigrant issue. I don’t think that it is.

My brain has seemed to re-wire itself over the past 10 years though I am considered a digital immigrant. I have much evidence of this transition, especially since going back to school. I had to re-learn how to write with a pen. Yes, I know how strange that sounds, but it took a long time to 1. choose between printing and cursive for speed and legibility, and 2. I couldn’t remember what my style of hand-writing looked like. The only time I had been using pen and paper was to write short shopping lists and to-do lists.

So far, I have discussed only the use of tools, but even my processing of information is slowly changing back. I am a little better able to focus on individual tasks one at a time again. Since, re-gaining this skill, I found my level of comprehension has gone up. Before, I had gotten to the point of multi-tasking so much with technology that I couldn’t even remember what other tasks needed completion.

Three weeks ago, I was trying to read an article for school on my computer when I came across a word I needed to look up. The word was “inchoate” (which is quite funny, because that’s how I’ve been through this whole transformation). I ended up searching the Internet for the meaning of the word and got lost in different information as links led to other links, leading me away and on to other topics.

I made a point of disciplining myself and returned to read my article and my thoughts drifted to another class of mine. We had been discussing how Facebook looks at your profile and tailors the sidebar advertisements to your interests. That reminded me of a great book I read called, “Feed”. (spoiler alert) The book was about a futuristic society in which when children when born, typically, they were implanted with a chip. The chip monitored a person’s interests and formed demographic and psychographic profiles in order to offer geographical services and products right to the brain throughout life. “Feed” focused on two teenaged characters. One had a late implant and as a result, she could at times, willingly disconnect herself from the feed. Because she was still able to think for herself, she ended up playing with the system and giving out messages to the chip that she was interested in things outside her demographic and psychographic profile like expensive cars and things that didn’t make sense for her lifestlye. It was an informal experiment she was trying out (I won’t spoil the book entirely, but the act leads to her demise). The other teen had the implant from birth and couldn’t decide things for himself, couldn’t concentrate, and couldn’t form coherent full sentences. He let the feed guide his movements and activities. Ironically, I couldn’t remember the author’s name, but I was trying so hard to finish my reading that I resisted looking up the information. When I got to the end of the article, I couldn’t remember what it was I wanted to look for. I even posted on Facebook that I was having difficulty remembering something I knew I wanted to look up, complaining and blaming multi-tasking with technology. When I stepped away from the computer and went to have a shower, it was while rinsing my hair that I remembered what I wanted to look up.

I am frightened for the digital natives. Their ability to retain information in their long term memory by connecting and making attachments is at risk largely due to the distractions precipitated by the act of technological multi-tasking and short spans of time with information. Stephen Kotler wrote an article in the May 2009 edition of Psychology Today in which he wrote,

“The harm being done by Twitter is the harm it’s doing to the brain. The average user goes tweet-tweet all day long. This tunes the brain to reading and comprehending information 140 characters at a time.

No one’s yet done the research, but I’m willing to bet my lunch-money, that if you take a Twitter-addicted teen and give them a reading comprehension test, their comprehension levels will plunge once they pass the 140 word mark.”

Kevin Parrish wrote an article in Tom’s Guide, published in September of 2009 about research done by Dr. Alloway, that suggests that Kotler is right.

“As reported by the Telegraph, Dr. Tracy Alloway, working out of the University of Stirling in Scotland, says that working memory is the ability to remember information, and actually put that information to use. After extensive research in working memory, she believes that success and happiness stem from this ability rather than having high IQs. She also believes that certain video games can train working memory, especially those that involve planning and strategy.

Although Facebook offers “thinking” games such as Sudoku, managing friends and dates on the social website exercises the working memory. Twitter, YouTube and texting, on the other hand, isn’t exactly healthy. “On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it’s also very succinct,” said Dr Alloway. ”You don’t have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you’re not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.””

Alloway’s work was done with 11-14 year old test subjects. Perhaps, it would also be beneficial to study those of us that teeter on the wall between the digital natives and digital immigrants. It might also be worth studying younger teachers for the added benefit of revealing the impact on the development of a new “educational model”.

Sitting in front of the blank television screen this morning, I noticed the reflection of myself in the glass. I wondered what would come to me; ideas for a TV documentary, a recount of “Two and a Half Men” that was airing when I came home from school last night? None of this came to me. Instead, I started looking at my computer sitting on the coffee table and getting the itch to read up on the latest news. What was on the 570News webpage this morning? My curiosity was piquing. Ever since I left my Saturday morning anchor job at the station back in March, I’ve not wanted to fall out of the loop with local news. I regularly enjoy my cup of coffee while surfing until I feel “in the know” again.

I resisted picking up my laptop and turned back to the blank screen. I absorbed and enjoyed the silence momentarily. With three children still sleeping in their beds, I could think without a series of interruptions. Soon my mind was drifting around the classes I had at Ryerson this week. Would I be able to get my head back into scholarly work since graduating from RTA in ’93? I assured myself that I would, as I have been taking courses in the Educational field quite regularly. It’s the content that would change.

I started to wonder what was Marusya’s purpose in asking us to stare at a blank screen? Surely, we would all be thinking about different things. The writers would be visualizing their next project on screen, the techies would be visualizing aesthetic shots or transitions of some day-dreamed screenplay,and the cerebral would be thinking about the psychological, developmental, societal, and cultural effects of a world without TV. And then there’s the intrapersonal types like myself who at some point will start to reflect inward.

My thoughts were interrupted by the smell of coffee and I realized my husband was in the room. He brought me a cup of “Pluto’s diet drink” (a reference made by an anonymous coffee house “watcher” found in the article, “A parcel of muddling muckworms’ we studied in Audiences and the Public) While I was taking my third sip, my five year old daughter came into the room, walked past me and turned on Spongebob Squarepants. I wasn’t going to ruin her Saturday morning routine so I moved to the next room before my 20 minutes of blank TV staring was up.

I started to think about what I needed for Monday’s class. We are discussing the Effects of Media in our night time lectures of Media Production. Drawing parallels between staring at a blank screen and the effects of media, I decided to dig out my David Buckingham book and read the chapter on “New Media Childhoods” I thought it would be good practice for gathering scholarly research and give me some information to prepare me for the discourse that would take place over the effects of media on children.

Of interest was Buckingham’s take on Neil Postman’s book, “The Disappearance of Childhood” (1983) in which he claims that the media are destroying childhood primarily with the increased access to information. Postman believes the modern conception of childhood was created by the print media,and that new media such as television destroys childhood as we don’t have to learn to read or interpret television, whereas acquiring print literacy took a long period of apprenticeship. He believes Television is a “total disclosure medium” through which children learn “secrets” about adult life -sex, drugs, violence….this information was previously hidden in the specialized code of print. As a result children are increasingly coming to behave like adults, and to demand access to adult privileges. (p 19, David Buckingham Media Education:Learning and Contemporary Culture, 2006, Polity Press).

Buckingham calls him a “technological determinist”, in which “technology is seen to produce social (and indeed psychological) change, irrespective of how it is used, or the representations it makes available” (p19)..Buckingham says Postman, “wants to return to an imaginary Golden Age of traditional moral values – and thereby to reinforce adult authority and control”. Postman is also directly opposed to the use of television in education; “for him, the school is the last bastion in the defence of print culture” (p19).

I agree with Buckingham that Postman is a “technological determinist”. Technology is essentially a tool and it is the intent and purpose in its use that actually determines the affect on an audience. As for Postman’s idea that the destruction of childhood through increased access to information by the use of Television to let children in on adult secrets, if Postman were writing this today wouldn’t he say that the destruction of childhood is exponentially higher because of the access to information through the Internet? Firewalls and parental controls only go so far and some computers are sitting in children’s bedrooms where parents can’t monitor their children’s Internet activity and content exposure.

If childhood has been destroyed exponentially from an increase in access to “adult secrets”, it certainly doesn’t jive with recent statistics on the delayed maturation of today’s young adults. If anything, the increase of access may have contributed to a lengthened maturation rate of young adults. I wonder if the exposure to adult secrets through traditional and new media has sufficiently frightened young adults into a holding pattern where they are in no hurry to leave the home, begin a career, and have a family. Of course, this is notwithstanding the progressive impact that the economic landscape and other aspects of culture have had on this age group. It would be narrow-minded to think of media impact as the sole factor.

Sufficiently filling myself with research for Media Production class, a loud sound from the other room confirming that I am needed elsewhere. Jelly fish have descended en masse inside Sponge Bob’s home and are stinging him. My daughter, Abbey is asking if he is going to die. Time for some “parental sit-down and explain time” as we watch the TV show together.

Endnotes:
“A parcel of muddling muckworms’: revisiting Habermas and the English coffee-houses” Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 8, No. 2, April2007, Routledge). I cross-referenced the term on the Internet and found it in a book by Henry C. Shelley called “Inns and Tavern of Old London”, published in 2004 on the Project Gutenberg site. Further searches reveal the book was first published in 1909

“Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture, “New Media Childhoods”, chapter 2, Polity, 2003
The phenomenon of a delayed maturation in young adults has become common knowledge, though it is worth researching where the statistics were first published. This would not be neglected in a scholarly article, but is being neglected here as this piece has fulfilled its purpose as a diary journal. Reviewing the MLA Style Guide will be reserved for another day.
Purdue OWL. “MLA Formatting and Style Guide.” The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 10 May 2008. Web. 15 Nov. 2008.